Infintesimalarity

And then I knew one. Not realized, but one, standing, eating breakfast, wearing her hair in a braid, in a scrunchie maybe, maybe even lying in the arms of another maybe, maybe praying with bowed head, with eyes that shone through closed lids and lashes kissing the sky. Sky above me, sky above her, the same sky, sky the same but from different angles – she sees it one way, and I, I another. Yet living, walking, churning out dashes of movement behind us, show us where we have been and zooming out, stretching back can be seen the paths growing ever closer, winding over oceans, maybe pausing for a moment before they waltz and spin and buzz like a bee out across fields and plains under oak trees and ashen skies, twirling and pining and perched on the edge of rocks we feel that same earth that grows under our feet, standing firmly planted now, for an age or now, then on our final paths, jaws set, hands curled in fists of purpose, hands effecting the change on the world, a world changing and melting in our paths, land hewn in two by movement to where we both shall meet in a final and wondrous crash…

Does that comfort you, knowing the world is small, and all horizons curl over one and the same earth, like a scoop of butterscotch ice cream, ever melting smaller, hope growing stronger, knowing time pushes all things into one microscopic moment? Does that pique your curiosity, ravage your brain, dispel all half-truths and release all captured moments intaglioed in classics to dance across the imagination, and swirling there and growing until overflowing the small cups we sip at tea?

The end of the world

He stood in the yard, engulfed in a deep fog. The red hill stood somewhere in the thick, looming larger unseen. It was easy to imagine this as the end of the world, and in a way it was – the end in the middle, where all ends meet, pushing their way up tall mountains and settling finally in a valley. Small orbs of light seeped into the air from neighbors’ houses, a network of lights, connected to the neighbors beyond, finally dying out at the edge of the village.

A chill settled in, the kind of chill that quivered the deep tissues in his chest. His exhaled breath rose for a moment, then dropped like a stone through water, flipping and tumbling to the bottom of a pond full of damp air. He wondered why moments like this made him feel queerly settled, like the days could roll on and he would be content to stand, stand unchanging and unchanged, waking in the morning, hauling out the waste water, filling it again, running cold water over hands in a basin, emptying, filling, trudging to school, lolloping home, a circle of being, being in this cloud sunk into the village ground.

Doors open, Doors shut

It’s the motion, the roundness, a clanging of metal on metal, flopping metal, banging metal, wind-whipped and over-bent metal, sometimes held by stick, sometimes held by rock, but always pushing up against the elements pushed by elements, flame cooked by elements and wranging on the door.

His head felt like that door, flapping and rocking and rent upon a metal frame. But just moveably so. Mentionably so. Recognizably so. The way you turn your head a bit to look at something with a new angle of eye, a refocused effort towards recognition, outing the hidden difference on the familiar image framed in front. It was just slightly so that she couldn’t put a finger on it at first, but later, after a kiss and a brushing of eyelashes, scootching back across rumpled couch, she made the tilt and could see it. There. In the angle of his neck. What was it? A word spoken by a sinewy line.

“How could we…?”

“I don’t know.”

Sigh.

Pursed upper lip.

“Alright I just—”

Shakes head. Line bends, warping.

Air escapes lungs.

Rolling off and climbing, climbing to a fridge, pulling the handle for the twenty-second time that day, eleven, eleven pm, hit the average, but there was only two.

The coolness from the frigid air didn’t reach his body from arms length. A look into the clinically white and washed inside of a white and washed door, metal door, though unbent.